Word: batalov
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...bittersweet mood of boredom (in every scene a clock seems to be ticking) is classically Chekhovian. The actors-Alexei Batalov and lya Savvina-are at once wholly natural and wholly professional, and Director Josef Heifitz' black-and-white camera work, while academic, manages magically to evoke the torpid heat of Yalta, the snowy chill of Moscow. And nowhere in the film is there a foot of propaganda-either for home consumption or for foreign eyes...
Made by Mikhail Kalatozov, a middle-aged associate of Eisenstein's, The Cranes Are Flying tells the story of two young students (Tatiana Samoilova and Alexei Batalov) who fall in love just before the Nazi invasion. He rushes off to the army, leaving her a letter of explanation, but the letter is mislaid, and she thinks she has been jilted. When her parents are killed in an air raid, she goes to pieces and lets herself be seduced by a no-good draft-dodger who plays the piano. She spends the rest of the picture in Siberia, nursing wounded...
...frankly propaganda. It exhibits, with great self-satisfaction, Soviet methods of dealing with the problem of the wolfish ragamuffins who infested Moscow after the War. Corralled by the police, the wild boys are set to work in a juvenile Commune, superintended by a tactful and vigorous social worker (Nikolai Batalov). From time to time they are obstreperous but gradually they become addicted to honesty and industry. The star pupil of what Batalov calls the "Children's Commune" is a stubby youth named Mustapha (Tzyvan Kyrla), with the figure of a baboon, the face of a gargoyle and the courage...